prep for the spiritual colonoscopy

John Piper, as you may have heard, was recently operated on for prostate cancer. He's regularly referenced in this blog because he has become a kind of mentor in absentia to this blogger. He's on sabbatical studying in Cambridge, England (someone's got to do it, I guess) and he's beginning that studious rest it appears by returning to the Gospels.

Anyway, what's your first reaction to some of the sayings of Jesus that don't readily fit into your conception of Him? Piper provides a helpful exercise here for how to process (and that's a rather antiseptic way of putting it) some of those sayings that you're likely to dismiss at first as something Jesus wouldn't have said.

As one who's had a colonoscopy, I can say that anything that can make the process any less of a shock is a most welcome thing. Consider his few words here a preparation for the kind of spiritual colonoscopy Jesus' words are uniquely equipped to perform.